Chicken, goat cheese, arugula and… apricot jam?

Yes, apricot jam adds a perfect unexpected note to this summery sandwich of chicken, goat cheese and arugula. Recipe below.

As anyone who spends much time in the kitchen knows, inspiration can come from anywhere. A recipe you’ve seen, a farmers market find, what’s on sale at the grocery store—even something you found in the back of your pantry. The inspiration for the sandwich above began with a photograph. Specifically, this one: Continue reading “Chicken, goat cheese, arugula and… apricot jam?”

Bawdy chicken: Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards

Cumin and paprika add plenty of flavor to Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards, but not much heat, as do orange juice, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon and red pepper flakes to the sauce. Recipes below.

MARION HAS ACCUSED ME IN THE PAST of being a culinary Francophile. And I’m the first to admit she’s right. Casting about for some grilling ideas for this week’s post, I came across a chicken recipe that called for chicken breasts sliced or lightly pounded into flattened pieces. If they’d used the modern term for this thin cut of meat, cutlet, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance. But no, they used the older French term, paillard [pronounced pah-YAHR], apparently named for a late 19th century Parisian restaurateur. Okay, I was interested. Continue reading “Bawdy chicken: Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards”

More spice than fire: White Chili

A mix of traditional and non-traditional ingredients—fresh ginger, bay leaf and oregano, for instance—give this White Chili a satisfyingly big flavor. Recipe below.

Easy to make, this white chili recipe is lively, robust and flavorful without being obvious. Lots of spices and herbs come together to create a satisfyingly complex taste without too much heat. I used to make it a lot, but it had fallen off the radar screen for reasons unknown. With chili season upon us, though—well, it’s always chili season at our house, but around late fall or early winter, it gets serious—it was time for it to make a comeback.

For the most part when we’re thinking chili, we stick with two takes on it, Marion’s and mine. Which gets made depends on which flavor we’re craving and who has the time and inclination to cook. What made me remember this big-flavored white chili was a recent bowl of ersatz white chicken chili from a restaurant near my office. The restaurant chili would have been fine had they called it soup. It had lots of clear broth, a definite sign of soup to me. And it had no cumin, a definite sign of, well, not being chili.

This recipe is definitely chili. It has a robust flavor and packs a little heat. There’s no mistaking the cumin presence. And—sorry, Texans—it’s got beans. But just like our two mainstay chili recipes above, it’s got some decidedly non-traditional touches too. Fresh ginger, for instance, and mushrooms. Bay leaf and oregano. And the only tomato you’ll find in it is a little used for garnish at the end. Based on a recipe from the Chicago Tribune’s excellent Good Eating section, it is hearty and satisfying—and the perfect antidote to a cold winter’s evening. Continue reading “More spice than fire: White Chili”

A hearty, hot soup for chilly nights

Loaded with lentils, vegetables, chicken and plenty of spices, this crowded Curried Lentil Soup makes a satisfying meal by itself. Recipe below.

Broth is all well and good in soups, but I like my soups crowded. Even as a kid, I would scarf down all the noodles and little cubes of chicken in my Campbell’s Chicken Noodle and leave a bowlful of broth, aggravating my mom and missing out on the liquid benefits of soup. Now that I’m all grown up, I can appreciate a nice slurpy bowl of miso soup on occasion. But crowded soups—soups packed with vegetables and chunks of meat and maybe some noodles—are still what I really crave.

This soup fits the bill perfectly, a true meal in a bowl. It’s got lentils and a whole host of vegetables, including spinach. It’s got nice chunky bites of chicken. And it’s got spices—curry powder, cumin, red pepper and fresh ginger—to fire it up a bit and make it as interesting as it is satisfying. For the curry, I used Hot Curry Powder from The Spice House. Any Madras curry is a good choice for its heat.

It’s easy to make this vegetarian too. Just leave out the chicken and use all water or vegetable stock in place of the chicken stock.

Speaking of chicken stock, I lucked out big time. Marion made some homemade stock recently to freeze and I nabbed some of that. Just before Thanksgiving, we’ll post her recipe for chicken stock as part of a cold sweet potato soup that has become a delicious tradition of our Thanksgiving dinner. If you don’t have homemade stock for this lentil soup, be sure to use low sodium chicken broth. You can always add salt later—you can’t take it out.

With soup season in full swing, this crowded lentil soup is a hearty, flavorful meal with enough heat for the chilliest night. It’s also relatively easy to get on the table after a busy day. Continue reading “A hearty, hot soup for chilly nights”

Elegantly rustic: Chicken with white beans

Simply prepared Chicken Breasts with White Beans would be at home on a French farm table or in a cozy neighborhood bistro. Recipe below.

Before I start this week’s post, I want to ask a quick favor. I know most of you are just here for the food. I respect that—that’s what Blue Kitchen is really about, after all. But we lost a dear old friend this week, someone I think you should know. Please read about him in WTF? Random food for thought. Okay, here we go.

My first thought with my first bite of this dish was that something this simple shouldn’t taste this good. I don’t mean easy to make, though it was that too. I mean simple ingredients—chicken, bacon, onion, carrots, garlic, some beans, a little wine, a little broth, some dried thyme—nothing exotic, nothing trendy or pricey or precious. All combined in a simple, straightforward way.

But it was good. Restaurant good. Not a rock star chef restaurant where a simple dish like this would be deconstructed and reconstructed into a well-meaning homage to the original, flashy and exciting but somehow off the mark. No, you’d find this dish in a little corner bistro that similarly combined a handful of simple ingredients—a good kitchen, a friendly, hip [but not hipster] staff and a handful of tables in a comfortable room—to produce a place you come back to again and again.

I called this dish elegantly rustic. It’s not so much its visual presentation. To be sure, it’s a handsome, hearty looking meal, something that will stir anticipation when it’s set before you. But it doesn’t lend itself to artful, architectural platings. In fact, to do so would be to do it a disservice. No, this is a meal whose roots are found on a rough wooden table in some French farmhouse. Or in a Tuscan one, perhaps.

Its rustic elegance comes instead from the way the simple ingredients come together to create something that is at once so comfortably familiar—like something you’ve eaten all your life, even if it’s the first time you’re tasting it—and surprisingly elegant in its subtle undertones. The thyme and the wine elevate the delicious, but big-flavored bacon, garlic and onion with a nice, refined finish.

I could smell the flavors layering and evolving as I cooked. You start by frying bacon—off to a good start, right? The original recipe only called for a teaspoon of thyme. I upped it by half and sprinkled about half of it on the chicken before browning it in the bacon fat. I did this partly to give the browned chicken flesh nice flecks of herbs and partly to impart a little more flavor to the blank canvas that is a skinless chicken breast. The immediate result of adding thyme earlier, though, was to shift the smells emanating from the kitchen from Waffle House to storefront bistro. As each new ingredient hit the hot pan, the aroma added a new layer.

Okay, enough rhapsodizing. Here’s the recipe. Continue reading “Elegantly rustic: Chicken with white beans”

The Joy of Cooking, at 90 miles an hour

Chicken and Mushrooms with Farfalle comes together quickly with a flavor boost from tarragon and brandy. Recipe below.

Quick, what comes to mind when I say cooking? I’m guessing you’ve probably started fantasizing about standing in a warm, pristine kitchen on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and luxuriating in playing with ingredients, preparing for an intimate dinner party for friends or a leisurely family dinner. Things are marinating. Whole heads of garlic are roasting in the oven. Maybe you’re sampling a little wine as you cook.

I don’t know about you, but for every moment I have like this, I have probably a dozen or so when we’ve finally made it home from work and are ravenous. And chances are, we’re hoping to run an errand or get to the library or the gym or something after we eat. So we’ve got maybe 3.2 seconds to get dinner pulled together. Sure, we can throw in the towel and grab some carry-out [and there are plenty of times we do], but when we rise to the occasion and get something good on the table quickly that we’ve made ourselves, it feels pretty good.

The challenge here is to embrace the moment for what it is and savor this kind of cooking experience as much as the extravagant weekend celebration of food. Maybe it’s my over-caffeinated approach to life—my Brooklyn buddy has likened me to a border collie [you have to know the breed to get the comparison]—but I’ve actually come to often prefer the high-speed kitchen.

Here’s a quick and delicious dish I pretty much invented in one of those 90-mph moments. No, you won’t get it on the table in 3.2 seconds [hey, I work in advertising—hyperbole is my stock in trade], but if you’ve already got the ingredients on hand, chances are you can beat the pizza delivery guy. Continue reading “The Joy of Cooking, at 90 miles an hour”